Heir to a Desert Legacy. Maisey Yates

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      That was the future that Sayid was offering right now. The chance to go back to the way things were. Like nothing had changed.

      She looked down, saw the rounded bump where once her stomach had been flat. And she thought of the child, sleeping in the next room, the child who had grown inside of her body, the child she’d given birth to, and she knew that everything had changed. Everything.

      There was no going back.

      “I can’t just let you take him.”

      “You were going to let Rashid and Tamara take him.”

      “They were his parents, and they were… meant to be with him.”

      “His place in Attar goes deeper than that,” he said, his voice uncompromising.

      “He’ll be confused, I… I’m the only mother he knows.” She’d never put voice to that thought until now. But she’d been caring for him. Breastfeeding him. She’d given birth to him, and even though, genetically, he was not her son, he was something, something that was essential in some ways.

      “You do not wish to go back to your old life? To get back to how it was?”

      In some ways she did. Badly. Just thinking about it, about what she’d have to give up, to either have Aden or to have things the way they were, made her feel as if she was being torn in two.

      “I don’t think it can,” she said, the truth, another thing she’d left unacknowledged for as long as possible. “It’s not the same. It never will be again.” A fact, irrefutable as far as she was concerned, no mathematical equations required to prove it.

      “Then what do you propose?” he asked, muscular arms crossed over his broad chest.

      Just then, Aden stirred, his sharp cry loud in the silence of the apartment. That single, shrill cry, pierced her heart, made her ache everywhere.

      “Take me to Attar.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      “ABSOLUTELY NOT,” SAYID said, striding from the living room and heading toward the bedroom, where Aden was crying plaintively.

      “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Something inside of her snapped, watching that large, predatory body walking toward the baby’s room.

      He stopped, turning to face her. “I am going to collect my nephew, as is my right.” He held the papers out, the surrogacy agreement, which she had signed, knowing full well what it meant. Papers she’d signed without regret. Papers that said Aden belonged to the royal family, to Attar, and not to her. Never to her.

      He turned away again and her feet carried her, without her volition, quickly, to where he was going. She put her hands on his shoulders and tugged him backward. His shoulders were thick and muscled, his frame solid and immovable beneath her hands. The kind of man she normally feared.

      For a blinding second, she had a flash of what it would be like if he swept the back of his hand across her face. She knew just how that looked. Hard packed muscle coming up against a petite frame. Knew what it looked like to see a woman crumbled on the ground, broken and bleeding, the victim of masculine power.

      Sayid didn’t do that. He stopped, not because she’d had any effect on him. He could have shrugged her off of him with ease, but he didn’t. Instead, he turned back to her slowly, his eyes dark, filled with heat and fury. “What are you doing?” he asked.

      “You’re not just going to go in there and scoop him up and carry him off to the desert,” she said, her pulse pounding in her throat. “You might be the sheikh in your country but here you’re just an intruder in my house and if I have to mace your ass and then call the cops I will do it.” Anger drove her, a rage that made her shake, made her body quiver down to her bones. It banished her fear, fear of retribution, of violence at his hands.

      Because right now, Aden was the weakest one here. And if she didn’t stand for him then no one would.

      “Interesting,” he said, his voice coated in ice, “your file said you were a scientist, I expected more reserve.”

      “And you’re supposed to be a leader, I expected you to have a little more of a deft hand at negotiation.” For some reason, he reacted to that. A small reaction, a small flare of something much deeper and more frightening than the anger from before. But it didn’t stop her. “Did you honestly think I would let you walk in and take my baby?”

      Sayid straightened, his eyes black, blank again, absent of malice, or anything else. “He is not your baby.”

      The truth hit, cold and hard, at the same time as the realization of what she’d said. “I know that. But I’ve been caring for him. I breastfeed him,” she said, desperation building in her chest, “you can’t just come in and take him.”

      “You were meant to surrender him, and you know it to be true.”

      “To Tamara,” she said, her voice rough. “I was meant to hand him to his mother, my sister, but she wasn’t there. His mother is dead. And no one knew about him. I didn’t know what to do, who to tell. The only other person who’s ever held him have been medical personnel, and you want to… to take him away.”

      “I don’t want to take him from you,” he said, his jaw tight, his tone hard. “I must do what is best for Attar. I am not here to disrupt your little game of house. But Aden is not your son, and he does not belong here.”

      “Then let me go there.”

      “And reveal the secret that Rashid was so desperate to protect?”

      She shook her head. “No. No… I could be… the nanny.”

      “For the next sixteen years? Until he comes of age?”

      She didn’t have the next sixteen years to spend in Attar. She had a life here. She had friends. And school. A student teacher position starting in the fall. All she had to do was wean herself away. There was no other choice, no other choice beyond making a clean break now, and that she knew she couldn’t do.

      She shook her head. “No… not that I…” She swallowed and looked down. “But maybe… if he could be here with me for a few months even. Six months.” She didn’t know why she’d said six months. Only that it was time. More time to try and wrap her head around everything that had happened to her. More time to hold on to Aden when she really should just let go.

      She started to walk into the room, toward Aden, and Sayid caught her arm, dark eyes blazing into hers. “Tell me this,” he said, his tone hard, “and be honest. You were only the surrogate, right? There was nothing between you and my brother?”

      “Nothing,” she said.

      “I need to know. Because there can be no surprises. No scandal.”

      “Rashid loved Tamara. He would never…”

      Sayid nodded. “He did. It’s true. But I have seen the things men can do, thoughtless things that cause a world of pain, and I would not put it past him. Not even him. Everyone is capable of evil.”

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